Two Rules for Social Media Marketing

By Adam | 6 Aug 2015 11:00:00

Marketing is a vital part of any business and, these days, social media is a huge part of marketing. So I hope you've got pages for your business on Twitter, Facebook and any other social media outlets that you might want to use. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that you need to be careful: there are certain rules that you need to stick to if you don't want your social media marketing to backfire. It would be a terrible shame if the very thing that is supposed to promote your business ended up turning people away from it.

An important thing is not to abandon your social media pages. If you were doing social media for a while, but then, for whatever reason, abandoned it, this is not going to look good. New people who come to your website may well take a look at your social media feeds if they're interested in you; if they see that it has been months (or even years, in some cases!) since you last updated them, they'll be put off. They'll think that you must be quite unprofessional or, at worst, that the business is no longer in operation! Whatever conclusion they come to, it still has a high chance of stopping them from making a purchase.

What's great about social media is that it allows you to be social. You can talk to customers and prospects in order to keep hold of old customers and attract new ones... But bear in mind that people will also use social media to complain if your business has caused them any trouble. Doubtlessly, your business is very good and conscious of its customers, but you can never avoid upsetting people entirely. You have to be careful with how you respond to these criticisms; in the past there have been cases where businesses have angrily lashed out at people who criticised them, which only went to make them look childish and unprofessional. Handle criticisms politely and sensibly.

But other than that, how you present your business is entirely down to you! You can be stoic or you can make jokes, you can post about all kind of things or you can rigidly post about your business. It's your choice and you will be the best judge of how to present yourself on social media. In a way, it's an almost creative action and social media marketing can be fun while also driving sales. Just be sure to stick to these two rules!